Old postmortem report,fresh fight for justice

The postmortem report,freshly discovered,says he died in a coma and pain resulting from 39 injuries,including burns. The Army has been maintaining Swaroop died of a drug overdose but now,Anguri Devi,says,the discovery vindicates the suffering she went through.

She will file a petition with the President of India,the Home Minister,the Prime Minister,the Defence Minister and the Delhi Police Commissioner to open a murder case,a plea that had failed earlier.

The saga has dragged on for years in the courts and led to court martials and prison terms for around 50 Army personnel,most of them based in Samba in Jammu. Aya Singh and Sarwan Dass,picked up for spying for Pakistan and tortured in custody,had been made to implicate a number of others setting off a chain of trials and suffering,says Dass,who now lives in Jammu.

Among those picked up was Swaroop. He was declared brought dead by doctors at the base hospital at Delhi Cantonment on September 30,1978,three days after he had been picked up.

The last Anguri saw him was two weeks before he died when he visited the family in Udaka in Mewat in Haryana. He left on a Sunday evening. She remembers bits of the last conversation. Swaroop was at the door and she asked him to leave the next morning instead. He said it was a call to duty; a man had come with a summons from Delhi and he left with him.

Two weeks later,the body came home. The last rites were performed by the couples son Sher Singh,who was then 13.

In the little booklet,yellowed and crinkled,where the particulars of the soldier are mentioned,the cause of death was simply found dead.

Anguri Devi was then 30. I brought up my children all by myself. Anju,my younger daughter,was very young. He had named all our children, she said. He was the only son. His mother fainted. We had to plead with the Army to give us the body for cremation.

He wasnt into drugs, she added.

Over the past three decades,Anguri Devi had fought for production of the postmortem report in court. She filed a writ petition in 1996,seeking registration of a murder case,a CBI investigation and Rs 15 lakh as compensation. The Delhi High Court sought medical reports; the police sought time to file a reply but never got back; the Army filed an affidavit denying the allegation. In 2001,the court dismissed the petition for lack of evidence.

We plan to file a complaint of criminal conspiracy,murder and destruction of evidence against former Army chief

O P Malhotra and the former MI Director,and seek action against Delhi Police officials for not registering an FIR despite having the postmortem report and knowing the facts, Anguri Devis advocate Deepak Masih said. We will file a writ petition in the court in a week.

Masih will also move the Supreme Court on behalf of Captain R S Rathour,who was accused and imprisoned in 1978 for alleged espionage after Aya Singh had implicated him.

We plan to move an application in the Supreme Court not to destroy any more records, he said. We want the CBI to investigate. Witnesses are still alive. The doctor who did the postmortem is alive. The postmortem report,dated October 1,1978,was signed by Dr B Singh of Delhi Mortuary.

Sher Singh says he wants everyone to know his father didnt die of a drug overdose.

Swaroop served in the Army for over 21 years and won the Raksha Medal in 1965,the Sainya Seva Service Medal,the Poorvi Star,the Sangram Medal and other honours.